Many casinos, racetracks, and other gaming establishments have a designated room or area called the “sportsbook” that is dedicated to wagering on sports competitions. These areas typically have a seating area and large television screens where patrons can view sports competitions that are currently going on, as well as betting windows where bets can be placed with the casino personnel operating the betting windows. There are also stand-alone sportsbooks that operate in brick-and-mortar establishments separate from any casino, as well as dedicated retail outlets and betting windows or terminals in bars, convenience stores, and other locations not exclusive to gambling. Increasingly, online sportsbooks have emerged that accept sports wagers from users over the Internet, without any brick-and-mortar venue for the patrons to physically visit. A user of an online sportsbook can place wagers with the sportsbook from any physical location permitted by law by uploading wager selections from the user's computing device to the sportsbook's server via an Internet connection.
There are many different types of wagers that can be placed in a sportsbook, whether online or brick-and-mortar. One popular type of wager is a “moneyline” wager, in which a patron bets on which team or player will win a particular sports competition, and the odds calculated by the sportsbook operator determine the payout percentage if the patron wins the bet. Another popular type of sports wager is a “spread” wager, in which the patron bets that a particular team or player will win a particular sports competition by at least a particular number of points (the “point spread”) over the losing team or player. Again, the sportsbook operator typically calculates the odds of a particular spread which determines the payout percentage if the patron wins the bet. Another popular type of sports wager is an “over-under” wager, in which the sportsbook operator typically predicts the number that will result for a particular statistic in a particular sports competition (typically the total number of points that will be scored by both teams/players combined), and the patron places a bet on whether the actual result for that statistic will be over (greater than) or under (less than) the number predicted. Other types of sports wagers are typically called “proposition” wagers/bets (as well as other names, such as “prop bets,” “exotic bets,” “novelty bets,” etc.), and can be placed on the occurrence any of numerous forms of events that could occur in the context of the sports competition without necessarily being tied to the final outcome of the entire competition. Examples could include whether a particular player will score on a particular play at a particular point in time during the competition; which player will score the first points in the competition; how many times the sports commentators will say a particular word during the sports competition; or any other event related to the sports competition for which the sportsbook may decide to calculate odds.
Many sportsbooks also offer combination wagers, such as “parlays,” “teasers,” “if bets,” etc., which combine two or more “straight bets” (e.g., moneylines, spreads, over-unders, props, etc.) according to particular rules. For example, in a parlay wager, the patron combines two or more straight bets, and must win all of the combined straight bets in order to win the parlay. An example of a parlay is a bet that one particular team will win one particular sports match and another particular team will win another particular sports match being played on the same or different days. If any of the individual straight bets are lost (e.g., if one of the teams does not win its match), then the entire parlay is lost. However, if the parlay is won by winning all of the combined straight bets (e.g., if both teams win their respective matches), then the payout is typically larger than the combined payouts of the individual straight bets would have been if they had been placed separately instead of in parlay. Sportsbooks may also offer combinations of parlay bets, such as “round robins,” in which the patron is able to bet on all combinations of parlays of a particular number of picks from within a selection made by the patron. For example, if the patron has selected five games, a round robin by threes would place parlays consisting of all possible combinations of three of the five games. In a round robin, the loss of a single straight bet within the combination causes the patron to lose any of the parlays within the round robin that include that straight bet, but not the others.